'Healing the Body Politic' through genocide: metaphors of racial 'illness' and 'cure' in National Socialist ideology and propaganda, 1919-1945

通过种族灭绝“治愈政治体”：国家社会主义意识形态和宣传中种族“疾病”和“治愈”的隐喻，1919-1945

• 批准号: AH/F002653/1
• 负责人: Andreas Musolff
• 金额: $ 3.68万
• 依托单位: Durham University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF002653%2F1
• 关键词: Healing; Body; Politic; through; genocide

The project investigates the imagery used by National Socialist ideologues to conceptualize the German nation as a (human) body that had to be cured from a deadly disease/poisoning, which was supposed to have been caused by the parasitical Jewish 'race' as well as other groups allegedly related to them. Whilst the use of such imagery has been described and commented on frequently in studies of political history and discourse history as well as in sociological research on racism, its cognitive status has often been left unclear. Interpretations range from assertions that it was a merely ornamental, though effectively used, 'figure of speech' to claims that it expressed the core beliefs of Nazi ideology and provided a literal 'blueprint' for the Holocaust. Both accounts seem problematic from the viewpoint of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, which holds that metaphors are cognitive operations of 'mapping' or 'blending' between different conceptual domains. Far from being mere rhetorical ornaments, they organize and shape human categorization, especially in the socio-political sphere, but unlike 'literal' concepts they involve multiple frames of categorization and argument-structure. This cognitive perspective provides the basis for the reassessment of previous research on the imagery of Nazi ideology and for a detailed study of the use of this imagery in key Nazi texts and their conceptual and intertextual relationships with traditions of political thought in Germany. Specifically, it will be argued that the body-health-illness metaphors in Nazi discourse served different purposes at different levels of ideology and propaganda. In the view of the general public, these metaphors appeared to be standard applications of a complex of concepts that had been established in Western thought since the Middle Ages. For the narrower, though demographically still significant, group of Nazi supporters and sympathizers, the imagery functioned as an explanatory model for the understanding of Germany's national crisis post-1918 and its 'solution'. For the Nazi leadership and the successively increasing groups of perpetrators, it provided a camouflage terminology for the implementation of genocide 1941-1945. This multi-level interpretation resolves the apparent contradiction between the 'literal' and 'ornamental' meanings of these metaphors, and it also relates its core concept (the bio-political blending to justify genocide) with recent findings in socio-historical research on Nazism that highlight the direct relevance of bio-political concepts at all levels of genocidal policies in the 'Third Reich'.The cognitive approach also allows us to reassess and complement standard interpretations of post-1945 discourse phenomena that seem to provide examples of 'surviving' Nazi and racist ideology. Political Illness/hygiene metaphors are still used by extremist right-wing groupings and parties to denounce minorities and foreigners. Whilst the rhetorical closeness and conceptual continuity of such discourse to historical Nazi discourse have been repeatedly emphasized in Critical Discourse research, its cognitive import has seldom been questioned. Moreover, the use of similar imagery in left-wing extremist discourse and even in strands of 'critical' descriptions of post-war discourse development has been left largely unexplored. The study will show that strands of these supposedly 'critical' uses in fact 're-cycle' illness/poison/parasite imagery to emphasize the ethical 'purity' of respective new political discourses in East and West Germany and post-unification Germany. By taking these newer strands of the continued use of bio-political imagery into account, the study provides a critique of the theoretical assumptions and methods of Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Metaphor Theory.

该项目调查了国家社会主义意识形态所使用的意象，将德意志民族概念化为必须从致命疾病/中毒中治愈的（人类）身体，这应该是由寄生的犹太“种族”以及其他据称与他们有关的团体造成的。虽然在政治史和话语史研究以及关于种族主义的社会学研究中经常描述和评论这种意象的使用，但其认知地位往往不清楚。解释范围从断言它只是一个装饰性的，虽然有效地使用，“修辞”声称它表达了纳粹意识形态的核心信念，并为大屠杀提供了一个字面上的“蓝图”。从认知隐喻理论的角度来看，这两种解释都是有问题的。认知隐喻理论认为，隐喻是不同概念域之间的“映射”或“融合”的认知操作。它们远不是单纯的修辞装饰，它们组织和塑造了人类的范畴化，特别是在社会政治领域，但与“字面”概念不同，它们涉及范畴化和论证结构的多重框架。这一认知视角为重新评估以往关于纳粹意识形态意象的研究提供了基础，并为详细研究纳粹关键文本中这一意象的使用及其与德国政治思想传统的概念和互文关系提供了基础。具体而言，它将被认为是身体健康疾病的隐喻在纳粹话语服务于不同的意识形态和宣传层面的不同目的。在一般公众看来，这些隐喻似乎是自中世纪以来在西方思想中建立的复杂概念的标准应用。对于人数较少的纳粹支持者和同情者群体来说，尽管在人口统计学上仍然很重要，但这些图像起到了解释1918年后德国民族危机及其“解决方案”的作用。对于纳粹领导人和不断增加的犯罪集团来说，它为实施1941-1945年的种族灭绝提供了一个伪装术语。这种多层次的解释解决了这些隐喻的“字面”和“装饰”意义之间的明显矛盾，它还将其核心概念（生物政治混合以证明种族灭绝的合理性）与最近关于纳粹主义的社会历史研究结果，这些研究结果强调了生物政治的直接相关性。政治概念在各个层面的种族灭绝政策在'第三帝国'。认知的方法也使我们能够重新评估和补充标准的解释后，1945年的话语现象似乎提供了“幸存”的纳粹和种族主义意识形态的例子。政治疾病/卫生隐喻仍然被极端右翼团体和政党用来谴责少数民族和外国人。虽然这种话语与历史纳粹话语的修辞接近性和概念连续性在批评话语研究中一再强调，但其认知意义很少受到质疑。此外，在左翼极端主义话语中，甚至在战后话语发展的“批评”描述中，类似的意象的使用在很大程度上还没有得到探索。这项研究将表明，这些所谓的“关键”链实际上使用“再循环”疾病/毒药/寄生虫的意象，以强调各自的新的政治话语在东，西德国和统一后德国的道德“纯洁性”。通过考虑这些新的生物政治意象的持续使用，本研究提供了批评性话语分析和认知隐喻理论的理论假设和方法的批评。